Tag Archives: Quinn Bill

So, OK, the cops ARE going to pay 25% of their health insurance premiums. This “concession” was probably made so that they could keep robbing taxpayers via Quinn Bill payments – $5 million for Worcester, since the state is no longer paying half the bill.

$5 million!

Worcester needs to STOP funding the Quinn Bill – just like the state of Massachusetts has.

(Just a thought: Will the WPS teachers follow suit? Will they pay 25% of their health insurance premiums? Or will they be the only municipal employee hold-outs?)

I have a newspaper. I write stories. Sometimes, like all reporters, I have to call the Worcester Police Department for comments re: stories we’re working on. Invariably, I get shunted to police dept. “spokesperson” Sgt. Kerry Hazelhurst. This guy cannot write – he can only answer the phone and get back to you with half-baked answers and then YOU, the writer, are supposed to record the golden goose’s verbal eggs (usually scrambled). This guy doesn’t/can’t write shit. He didn’t write the WPD press release that’s sailing around the blogosphere. Continue reading WPD’s “communications guy” Sgt. Kerry Hazel Hurst: too stupid to have written that press release!→

Wow! The Quinn Bill classes! A total farce! A complete waste of time! A black hole for our tax dollars! A football field of quick-sand! We always felt these classes were jr. high part II and did nothing to make cops more sensitive to their communities or give them better communication skills. Just look at some of our cops and the way they “finesse” all kinds of volatile/deadly situations – specifically Mark Rojas.

But now the City of Worcester knows for sure. Quinn Bill diploma mills (Anna Maria, QCC) tell police officers: give us the money – and we give you a piece of paper that gets you other pieces of paper – the green kind with our founding fathers printed on one side and “In God We Trust” on the other. Police Chief Gemme got himself an extra $40,000 (per year) because he took these classes. And other cops have reaped the benefits – $5 million in total. $5 million per year the City of Worcester must pay (it’s in the police contract) all the Quinn Bill “Scholars” at the Worcester Police Department. Continue reading Worcester’s cops need to wake up … and smell the Quinn Bill→

Yes! Yes! The synapses in my head are firing like mad! How they crackled this afternoon when, coming out of a store in Holden (near the Jefferson line for Gawd’s sake!), I saw a WORCESTER DPW truck sitting in a parking lot with four Worcester public works employees – slurping on milkshakes! What the heck were our DPW workers doing in Jefferson practically – on city time? Couldn’t they slurp on their McShakes in Worcester, the city that employees them? The DPW pickup truck had a double cab – a front and back seat – so no one was cramped. Thank goodness! Because it was such a fine summer day! A sunny, perfect day to take a jaunt through the country! ON WORCESTER TAXPAYERS’ DIME!!!

Pathetic.

This is why Worcesterites have so little respect for the municipal workers we pay $50,000, $80,000, even $100,000 and $150,000 (our cops’ salaries). Only to get … this – sitting in the middle of Holden in a Worcester DPW truck. Using gas that Worcesterites paid for, showing no incentive, showing no respect, sneaking around. So, how long is their lunch break? Why couldn’t these four guys take their own vehicles? Was that it for today, as far as their work goes? Were they calling it a day? Giving themselves the afternoon off – far, far away from the peepers that sit in the head of DPW and Parks Commisioner Robert Moylan? Jeepers, creepers! Or were the DPW guys going to bring Moylan back some of that good country cookin’?

We’ll never know.

Even more outrageous: the sight of Worcester Police Officers Don Cummings and Tom Daly whining during this week’s Worcester City Council meeting about losing their Quinn Bill benefits (read lots and lots of dough). Wah! Wah! We can’t make over $100-grand now! Wah, wah! We can’t take our nice vacations! Wah! Wah! We won’t be able to put in that Jacuzi! Wah! Wah! We will lose our upper-middle class way of life. Continue reading Dump the free-loaders!→

Finally, the State of Massachusetts is pulling the plug on the Quinn Bill – the millions and millions of dollars that may as well have been flushed down the crapper but instead were given as bon bons to Worcester (and all the other municipal) cops who took high-school-part-2 classes at Anna Maria College. Why? So that this city can pretend we have an educated police force. Why again? So that police officers who already make a load of dough can make a shit load of dough, if they snooze through the Quinn Bill classes. The classes don’t do anything to make them more enlightened cops. A good brain, a heart and an in-shape body, along with knowledge and love of your community, make you a great cop. And a Catholic liberal arts school like Anna Maria needs to get out of the cop-training business. It’s just a way for them to make a ton of money easily.

Now the City of Worcester will have to pay Anna Maria millions of dollars, if we want our police officers to go through the Quinn program. We know that won’t happen. Hooray!

You want “educated” cops? How about a residency requirement for all Worcester cops? How about a few internships with the Rape Crisis Center or Friendly House or some other great social service agency in town? How about a mini-course in customer service? There are so many dismissive, rude, red-faced, apopleptic, stressed-out, sloppy, slap-happy cops out there. How about giving them a Miss Manners handbook, to go along with their guns and night sticks?